such and honestly the the best I've had I had the opportunity to work with some really good bishops in word councils.
They always counsel with everybody. There's no dictatorship. This was not a this is not leadership by dictatorship.
They were counseling. They were asking everyone's opinions. And I do think that maybe there's a higher and holier way
that we're learning how to lead as well. Like women have a lot to learn. Men have a lot to learn. Um, and and I do think
like men who are listening to this, I learned the power of the priesthood and testimony of the priesthood from my dad,
not from my mom, from my dad. Because he was a faithful father, great leader,
convicted, moral, had integrity. And so when people would say, you know, it
always comes back down to like the micro, like what's my personal experience like? Well, men in the Mormon press you. I'm like, huh, that's that
has not been my experience with my dad or with my husband. And so in many ways I do think that dads, especially teenage
girls, there's this pivot in high school where young women really want to hear. So I don't know why it's not fair, but
we just think our dads are so much more credible. And when a dad is able to teach you those things in high school,
young women are very willing to listen. and a dad, a righteous dad really is in
the best position to teach those those testimonybuilding ideas
about priesthood power for men and for women in the way it's structured in our church. I really think it's it's an
opportunity that we could seize on in the next hopefully now, start now.
So that leads in a little bit to to my last question here, Willie, which is why
what do we do about this situation, right? What can we do? We've got we're fighting so hard against this culture,
this pop culture, right? This mainstreaming of all of these ideas. Our fertility rate in the church is dropping
not quite as much as everybody else, but Utah dropped 10 spots out of 50 last year in in their fertility rate and and
it's there's a lot of imports, sure, but it's changing, right? Our our fertility
rate is dropping. We're getting married later. We're having fewer kids. Uh how
do you get a message? And this is a message that men need as well. But how do you get that message to young women and and and youth
that this is still really important? It's almost seems to me like it's kind of like the family proclamation. We're
afraid to talk about it sometimes. We're afraid of the push back on certain elements. How do we get that message out to the
young women and to the youth of of no, marriage is great. Marriage is fulfilling. Sure, it's hard, but it's
it's it's the greatest fulfillment that you can have is having a family and and don't don't necessarily push it off too
far and and how do you how do you raise that up in your value and your goals as
a young woman as compared to what the culture right now wants?
Yeah, I think that's a great question. I think that there are two there's a lot of ways that men and so mothers and
fathers can do this. I think the first thing that mothers really need to stop doing is stop telling their young
daughters how hard family life is. I've always said to my I honestly this these
numbers hit me. My kids are still young. Um and also in the East Coast, we kind of have to fight a harder battle to get
our kids to a to a threshold of having testimonies because there's so much more opposition. But I said to my husband one
day, I was like, "We are our own best PR. We our relationship is what will
convince our kids that family life is worth it is worth the risk. If they see
us being miserable with each other, being critical of each other, why would they want that? So, that's the most
micro thing is you are your own best PR. The way you treat your spouse, the way you prioritize your marriage. Um, the
second thing, and this is honestly a lesson that I feel like I came away with from fair, which is obviously we're a
little more, I guess, conservativeish politically and traditionally on this channel, but we speak in our own
language when we're trying to convey these messages. And I would say we need to start speaking the language of
feminism when we're testifying of truth. Meaning, we need to start swapping words like feminism with gender equality. Like
just go into chat GPT and say, "What are other words for feminism?" and you just use the language that these young women
and frankly gent you late in life feminists use. If you were to go on that Jared Halverson struggle session with
Faith Matters, just look at the words that these women use. Patriarchy, um, you know, oppression, silencing,
there's so many buzzwords, but we kind of need to be able to speak their language because they've become
expertise in this language of feminism. And that's why it's like it's not even feminism, it's just our culture now. we
have to kind of speak the way that they speak. So, you'll see my videos going for I'm not going to use the word
feminism anymore because I know that's going to um kind of put off a group of
women that I want to be able to communicate with. Um and then
oh, I think I think we really also have to and this is where I had to kind of had a humbling session with women like
for myself like with women like Julie Hanks is like What I see in her now is heartbreak is
that she's been asking honestly some of the questions these women are asking are legitimate.
They are legitimate questions and they don't necessarily not necessarily her but like younger women are asking a lot
of those same questions and they're asking from a good faith position. And so we really need to do our best to
answer their questions. And honestly all I do is read conference talks. You could literally just start a 2019 and read
Russell M. Nelson's talks and he gives all of those answers. And if you've been to the temple, you have an additional
advantage because you also understand the distinction between temporary callings in the church and eternal
callings in the family. And um and Elder Ballard's really he's like what matters
most lasts the longest. I really Yeah, I think that there's a lot that we could
do to validating their concerns, but there are answers. So my
I think that's great advice. really appreciate you coming on the channel. I I'm definitely going to follow up and have you back on for some additional
questions that I've got. But I think you've got great insights. If people are interested in following up with Rachel,
you can find her at Women in the Priesthood on YouTube. Anywhere else? I do have a website, but it's in the description of and I have like all these
little fun handouts that you can do with your daughters that was designed for my young women where they can kind of do
this kind of like hands-on like what are the covenants you've made? What are the callings you've made? How does this
allow you to understand your current priesthood power and maybe authority right now? And that's a starting point
for personalizing what priesthood power means for her. Like getting away from the big like low charts that talk about
like the priesthood. So that that's and that's just in the that's just women priesthood.org but it's always in the
description of my videos. Awesome Rachel. Appreciate it. Thanks.
